Question

Simpson Corporation has been having difficulty with their customer service. The sales department has had record sales over the past month but the production department has not been able to fill the orders quickly enough. The production manager is blaming the human resource department for not meeting the demand for new workers. The human resource manager says that there have been many problems with the database software due to the increased demand and they have been unable to access recent online job applications. The sales department has also complained that the marketing department has been sent out marketing material with outdated information which is confusing customers. The marketing manager says that middle level management has been giving them incorrect information about new products which has caused these problems. The company has decided that they need to hire you to help them solve their problems. You are a business expert and knowledge worker and you have studied Busi 237. Using the terms and concepts from your textbook explain what Simpson Corporations problems are and what needs to be one to do to fix them.

Answer 1

Establishing the decision criteria--The first step is to create an objective standard by which to evaluate your options. Of course each company will have different criteria. Some important considerations include cost of ownership, ease of use, functionality, ease of database administration, and scalability.

Matching the solution to the  business goals- the choice of database technology should take into account your business goals. Each business is different, thus there is no one-size-fit.

Avoiding the end up with sprawling systems and disparate platforms. So an important consideration is whether a solution will “play nice” with existing software and hardware components.

Workload on hardware resources--whatever DBMS we select will be judged on database performance, or how fast it supplies information to users. It is important to remember that workload can fluctuate dramatically by the day, hour or even minute.Take for example, the database of a retailer during a holiday shopping event. Under those conditions, the processing demands placed on the system may tax the hardware and software tools at the disposal of the system. The goal should be enabling the largest possible workload to be processed without resource upgrades.